


all of these precious things

by Red (S_Hylor), SirSapling



Category: Marvel Ultimates
Genre: Bottom Steve, Bottom Steve Rogers, Comic Book Science, Developing Relationship, Gem baby, Grief/Mourning, Infinity Gem Anthony, M/M, Mentions of Cancer, Mpreg, Parent Tony Stark, Presumed Dead, Temporary Character Death, Terminal Illnesses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-22
Updated: 2019-01-22
Packaged: 2019-10-14 11:23:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17507678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/S_Hylor/pseuds/Red, https://archiveofourown.org/users/SirSapling/pseuds/SirSapling
Summary: There's Tony, and then there's Anthony. They go together, and Tony wouldn't change it, even if he knows that Anthony is going to kill him one day.Then there's Steve, and Tony doesn't expect to be loved, never expects that he'll be put in the situation of having someone to leave behind.But it's not him who disappears.





	all of these precious things

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the kinkmeme prompt from round 13 asking for [Ultimates, Mpreg with Anthony - Anthony wants to be a real boy](https://cap-ironman.dreamwidth.org/1926443.html?thread=14429739#cmt14429739).
> 
> Got to admit, Sap and I saw this prompt and really, it was only ever one way this was going to go with us, despite suspecting that it isn't exactly what the OP might have been aiming for. 
> 
> Thanks to [KittKat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KittKat) for the beta work, lovely and prompt as always, and some lovely comments.

It’s months later when it really hits him. Months of silence in his head, months of not seeing Anthony in the room with him. He misses him. Misses him something fierce. The absence of him is deafening. The empty space in his brain aches worse than the infinity gem ever did.

Some days he catches himself going to talk to Anthony, only to get silence in response. Steve looks at him with a pinched expression of grief, like he’s getting the ache and the silence second hand through Tony, even though he never saw or heard Anthony.

That hadn’t stopped Steve from talking to him. From talking to him through Tony. No one else had ever bothered to do that. No one else had ever cared.

He’d heard Steve some nights, after he thought Tony had gone to sleep. Lips pressed to his hair, talking to Anthony as though he believed that he could hear him.

_You’re making him too sick. I know you don’t mean to. Please, don’t take him away from me._

It broke his heart. Because he knew if he was given the choice between himself and Anthony, he’d chose his son without hesitation. Even if it would break Steve’s heart.

It broke his heart too when he’d heard Anthony whisper back.

_Okay. I’m sorry._

It wasn’t his fault. And it wasn’t Steve’s fault for wanting Tony to be okay. He knew that all Steve had ever done was lose people. It had been selfish to get into a relationship with Steve, when he knew that he was only going to leave him behind. Heartbroken.

In his defense, he hadn’t expected Steve to love him. They’d just fallen into bed together in the wake of Natasha dying and Jan going back to Hank. It had been a simple case of not wanting to be alone. A physical antidote for loneliness. Until one night, instead of doing his usual post-orgasm disappearing act, Steve had set his jaw, settled against the pillow and glared at Tony, challenging him to make him leave. He hadn’t. Of course he hadn’t. He’d smiled at Steve, kissed his shoulders, collar bones, neck, that stubborn jaw. Kissed his ears until he’d felt them grow hot.

He’d pressed himself into Steve’s space when he hadn’t been pushed away. Tucked himself against Steve’s back and held him, pressing fingertips into the dips of his abs, sliding his palm along the point of his hip. Rolling his own hips against Steve’s wonderful, beautiful, luscious thighs and watching him squirm as lazy arousal had grown into a thick burn. Until they were both, improbably, hard again. Until Steve had pushed his hips back, reached behind him to pull Tony closer. Demanded he slide back into him. Said _fuck me_ in a broken voice. Tony hadn’t though. There was something too heavy in the air around them. Something in the pinched corners of Steve’s mouth, the way he wouldn’t quite meet Tony’s gaze when he’d reached, hand fitting against his throat, fingers tucking under his jaw and turning his face so he could press kisses against his lips. He’d pushed back inside Steve, still slick with lube and come from before, still loose and pliant, impossibly warm.

He was a hopeless romantic, even if no one actually believed that about him. He’d made love to Steve then, kissing him slowly, holding him close. With a hand on his chest and a hand curled around his throat holding him still so he could kiss him, Tony could feel the way Steve’s breath hiccuped. Could see the emotions running wrought in Steve’s eyes. How vulnerable he was, how open he was when he was usually closed off.

He didn’t let go of Steve, kept hold of him, as he’d broken apart, come to pieces, even as he came, hot and untouched. The way he’d clenched down on Tony, the way he’d cling to Tony’s arms and panted against his mouth had Tony following soon after. New come mixing with that already there, spilling out, sliding down their thighs as Tony grew soft without pulling out. He stayed there, held Steve, kissed him through the aftermath of it.

They didn’t say anything then, but Tony suspects that that was the moment that something changed between them. Steve stopped bolting after that; he’d stay the night, make Tony eat breakfast in the morning before he left.

Then he stopped leaving.

It wasn’t a slow slide into love. No, Tony’s convinced love happened that night, when Steve looked at him with an expression that said _I dare you forever_ , and Tony had kissed him _challenge accepted, my love_. It was just a slow slide into the realisation that love had been there for a long time.

Steve wasn’t meant to fall in love with him, though Tony knew he had little chance of not falling in love himself. But knowing Steve loves him made things tricky. Because when asked to choose between himself and Anthony, he’d choose his son without hesitation.

When asked to choose between Steve and Anthony, there was a pause longer than he was comfortable with.

Knowing he was inevitably going to leave Steve, just like everyone else had, made him feel more nauseous than the cancer meds used to.

When Steve started talking to Anthony, started pressing kisses and whispering goodnight against the back of Tony’s head, he realised that it wasn’t just going to be him that Steve was going to lose.

It wasn’t until that night though, months ago, when Steve asked Anthony not to take Tony away from him, and after moments of silence had spoken again, that Tony realised just how much he was asking Steve to lose.

_I know you don’t want to hurt him. It’s not your fault. I know Tony doesn’t blame you, he loves you. I love him, and you’re a part of him, so I love you too. Even if I’m never going to get to meet you._

He’d wanted to roll over then, to assure Steve that Anthony loves him as well. To promise him that he’d try anything to make it possible for Steve and Anthony to meet, when Anthony had whispered in his mind, with all the surety and conviction of a child who believed without a doubt in what they said.

_You will._

When he’d woken up in the morning there was only silence. As the day progressed and Anthony didn’t make an appearance Tony felt the loss of him, the silent empty spaces where his son had been. Scans later than day confirmed what he feared. The mass in his head, the tumour, the infinity gem, it was gone.

Just gone.

Anthony was gone.

He doesn’t cope with the empty spaces and the silence. Grief hits him in ways that he never thought it would. Steve stays by him, his own face pinched with an expression that is caught between grief, relief and guilt. Part of Tony wants to hate him for that. Wants to hate Steve for not being able to miss Anthony the way he does. He drinks more than he should, more than he has in months, wipes himself out and cries. Steve picks him up, cleans him up and puts him to bed. That night it’s Steve who tucks himself against Tony’s back, holds him close, instead of how it usually is. When Tony’s dozing, nearly blacked out from the alcohol, he feels Steve kiss the back of his head, whisper apologies. In the dark he feels Steve’s body shake as he cries.

It’s months later, six almost to the day, that it really hits him. Six months of silences and empty spaces, of missing Anthony, when it really, finally sinks in. Despite knowing for months, despite the scans, the doctors appointments, the images that Steve stuck to the fridge with magnets, tucked into the edge of the mirror frame in the bedroom, left lying out on the coffee table.

Images to fill the empty spaces.

It really hits him when he watches Steve get out of bed one morning, nearly six months later, and pulls on a white shirt like he does every morning. The white fabric stretches over his shoulders, over his biceps, comes just short of meeting his briefs. It’s when he turns ever so slightly and Tony’s eyes fall on the way the white fabric stretches over Steve’s stomach, clings to the gentle curve that’s replaced his once toned abs.

That’s when it hits him.

Anthony isn’t gone.

They’re just waiting to meet him again.


End file.
